TV nets must change or die: Deloitte report

The death of the 30-second spot has been predicted by numerous industry pundits in recent years. Now a new report goes beyond that, suggesting that conventional television networks are under threat of extinction. The report out of Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry group says conventional ad-supported TV will go the way of the dinosaur if they don't become more consumer focused and broaden their cross-platform activities.

Media fragmentation, new formats and devices are again cited as the culprits as consumers pursue information and entertainment content via a wider array of media channels and platforms.

The death of the 30-second spot has been predicted by numerous industry pundits in recent years. Now a new report goes beyond that, suggesting that conventional television networks are under threat of extinction. The report out of Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry group says conventional ad-supported TV will go the way of the dinosaur if they don’t become more consumer focused and broaden their cross-platform activities.

Media fragmentation, new formats and devices are again cited as the culprits as consumers pursue information and entertainment content via a wider array of media channels and platforms.

Skewed mainly towards the investor community, Television Networks in the 21st Century: Critical Mass in a Fragmenting World advises that the traditional ad-supported, mass-market model will no longer be able to deliver growth to investors unless broadcasters change now.

The report suggests that broadcasters use a TV network as a gateway, similar to what Yahoo and Google are doing online or, as in the physical world, a source of a wide variety of products and services such as supermarkets and department stores have adopted to build incremental value. This could include building customer relationships, gathering customer data, creating and packaging premium products for certain segments with generic or national brands for others. Like these other business sectors, the report says broadcasters must broaden the scope of their businesses and carefully manage their brands.

Critical Mass discusses a number of activities to help broadcasters stay alive in this new world, many of which we’ve begun to see in the Canadian market over the past few years. These include offering content over a variety of media channels and formats, the repackaging and marketing of content, and more digital content that can be sold or rented across various media.

The result of these efforts would be on-demand content available by way of DVD sales or rental; Web-casts, radio, mobile phone downloads, and VOD (video on demand); interactivity such as voting, shopping, online games, quizzes, Q&As, and chats; and events that tie into programming.

In Canada, broadcasters took note of the changing world and began adapting earlier than perhaps other markets Deloitte is studying. Videotron and TVA in Quebec are pioneers of interactive television and amongst other activities, have had voting by remote control, online, and SMS as part of TVA’s top-rated Star Academie Idol-type program for several seasons already. CHUM’s MuchMusic Video Awards offers voting online and by phone and extends the reach of a lot of its special programming by taking it across cable, conventional TV, the Web, and events. CTV collaborates often with its Bell Globemedia partners to develop content for television, online with Sympatico, and in print with the Globe and Mail.